The letter from Prole2’s teacher says he is going to get sex and relationship lessons soon.

I did not get sex education lessons when I was small.

I found everything out on the day I found a particularly elaborate prophylactic by the side of the road and being very pleased at my new found ‘balloon’.

I have never seen one quite like it since.

It was unused, in case you were worried.

Anyway, this sparked a quick and very precise conversation about reproduction which careered through the main issues in order to illustrate why I was not allowed to take it in the house, blow it up and/or take it to school to show my friends.

I never got ‘relationship’ lessons though.

I wonder if that is just a word they use these days to sweeten the pill of biology lessons in Primary Education or if they actually do teach about relationships.

It’s a tricky area.
I couldn’t teach about relationships.
Seems a bit broad.

What makes a good relationship?
I feel daunted by the subject.
Clearly I lacked guidance when I was at Primary School.

The other day Prole1 learned about Civil Partnerships.
I thought I had the subject pretty much locked down in my head but explaining the current situation surrounding Gay marriage in Britain is a mine field.
I have been trying to tease out the knotty subject of religion with him and am trying very hard to let him make his own mind up.

Prole1: So the first Gay marriage was in 1601?

Me: What?

Prole1: The first Gay marriage was in 1601. Why was it made not right? Why did people stop it?

Me: What?

Prole1: You know.

I didn’t.

Prole1: When men marry men.

Me: 1601? Really?

Prole1: Yes. I think so. A long time ago. Was it the Government that stopped it?

Me: Ummm…I’d have to look, it was probably them or the Church….

Prole1: Why would the Church do that?

Me: I am just cooking, can we talk about this later?

Later.
When I have had time to google the hell out of it and write down some bullet points.
I sort of need Stephen Fry and the Cannon Emeritus of Salisbury Cathedral in the room when we discuss it.
I always felt they would get on, despite apposing views in some areas.
I bet they both like the same puddings.

Prole1 is wrong about 1601 by the way.
Well, technically he is wrong, it happened in Spain not Britain.

And yes, I had to google that.

I could tell him what I think but my views are crushingly secular on this subject and others.
I can’t really talk about it all without getting cross.

I just hope Prole2’s lessons in relationships focus on the idea that most people are nice, respect should be given, that you can, if you try, be friends or friendly to almost every single person you meet and that love is something that chooses you, not the other way round.
I hope the lessons have nice pictures as well.

I was preparing the ground by trying to locate The Usborne Book of Where Babies Come From.

I have not seen it for a couple of months, it is one of those well thumbed publications that Prole1 read over and over, mostly for the nice pictures.
Prole1 keeps his books on top of the wardrobe.
He can reach them from the top bunk where he sleeps but I have to get a bathroom chair and stand on it.
From the chair, on tip toes, I can just see the top of the wardrobe.
The idiosyncratic way Prole1 ‘stacks’ his books means that inadvertent shifting of the stack could cause a book slide straight at you, at eye level.
If they miss your eyes you have to do the ‘don’t-hit-my-feet’ dance as hardbacks crash on to the chair.
Softback House At Pooh Corner is fine, hardback Harry Potter And The Order Of the Phoenix is a different toe crushing matter.

Prole1 watched with complete disinterest as I tried to make sense of his filing system.

I turned over a Secret Seven and found some folded pieces of paper.

On the front were the words: Alphabet Verson 2

Me: What is this?

Prole1: Oh, yes, I have worked out the whole alphabet in Dwarvish Ruins.

Me: Runes?

Prole1: Runes. Yes. I got them all from the Hobbit.

Prole1 has been given a leather bound hard backed copy of the Hobbit by the rockfather.
They sat together deciphering the first few letters of the Dwarvish Alphabet.
Prole1 has been sitting up the last two nights and has worked out the whole Alphabet.

Me: All of them?

Prole1: Yes, you have to go through the whole book and find them. Did you know there is no letter Q in dwarfish? You can use the ruins for C and W to make the sounds. I hope to copy this all up in best and then I will write the whole thing out in Dwarvish with and English translation instead of English with a Dwarvish translation. That will be Version Three.

Me: Right…

Would it have been tactless to suggest that he learn to spell in English first?

Can’t he learn Cornish? Or Mandarin?

I feel I should encourage him to learn a foreign language but should it be a dead language like Dwarvish?
And I mean dead in the sense that THE DWARVES OF TOLKEIN WERE NEVER ALIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I looked at his writing, wobbly and uneven.
Every rune was copied out though and every one of them looked like a rune.

I have been worried about it for a while, the first three films in the series can be quite close to the bone.

Pressure and bargaining, bargaining and pressure. Yes to the Star Wars series, no to Harry Potter, X-Men and any Avengers linked film. Not yet.

The first three films are the worst, for the most part they are fairly harmless romps through space, as long as you ignore the mild bondage and rubber wear the female protagonist seems most comfortable in during “romantic” scenes and the fact that one of the characters, “Annie”, gets dismembered and set on fire whilst still alive.

“Annie” then becomes Darth Vader, for those of you who don’t know, and in a remarkably improbable series of events and plot points (in which all characters behave as if they have no intelligent thought between them) we lurch into the much cuddlier final three films.

After the film Prole1 wanted more detail.

Prole1: So, in Star Wars the Galactic Senate is what?

Me: What?

Prole1: What is the Galactic Senate?

Me: It’s that place with all those round floaty things with people standing in them and talking. Where the Evil Emperor comes from.

Prole1: Yes I know that but why are they doing all that talking?

Me: Well, it’s the Government of the Galaxy.

Prole1: Muh?

Me: Ok, if our house was a planet, and there was a Galactic Senate one of us would have to go there to discuss what our planet thought should happen in the Galaxy. They would go to the senate and be a Senator.

Prole1: Would you go? No, you are in charge here. One of us would go.

Me: Yes, one of you would be a Senator and go. We would vote for it.

Prole1: I would go.

Me: Well, it’s a democracy so we would vote.

Prole1: You can’t vote because you are in charge and that’s not a democracy. He can’t vote because he is on the toilet.

Me: He has been up there a while.

Prole1: So when I got there I could get a floaty thing and tell the other planets what we thought?

Me: Yes.

Prole1: Like in Parliament?

Me: Ummm, yes, just like Parliament I suppose.

Prole1: So I’d be like a …what are they?

Me: Politician? MP?

Prole1: MP! MP! We learned about them at school. There are lots of them in a big house.

Me: That’s right, they all talk….

Prole1: And there is the one, the one they all voted for who is in charge?

Me: The Prime Minister, our Prime Minister at the moment is David Cameron.

Prole1: Prime Minister. Yes. Prime Minister…..

Short pause whilst Prole1 jams his fingers in his ears, screws up his face and looks at the light bulb.

The light shade is split where I tried to hit Prole2 with the beanbag earlier and caught it with the up swing.
He is a slippery one but I got him in the end.